23. Dangerous
Dangerous
Kiri
Someone crashes into my back.
“Jesus—” Ronan stumbles sideways, coffee sloshing over the lid. “You can’t just stop like that, man. You’re a fucking wall to us normal-sized people.”
I catch his arm before he goes down. He laughs and squeezes past.
“Sorry.”
I force my legs to move. Natalia watches me as she takes a slow sip of coffee.
“Morning,” Kasia says as her and Rafe climb into the chaos. I nod.
“You look terrible.” Natalia throws the comment at me, her mouth twitching against her cup. She's loving this.
“Thanks. Appreciated.”
Rithy drops into a seat across from her and stretches his legs into the aisle.
“He overslept.”
Every head within range turns toward me.
Ronan gasps theatrically as he throws his bag on his bunk. “No!”
“Kiri overslept?” Rafe asks as he plops down into a free seat, Kasia joining beside him as he slides an arm around her shoulders. “Is the world ending?”
“I didn’t sleep well. It's not a big deal.”
Natalia nearly chokes on her coffee, she disguises it as a cough.
She presses a fist to her mouth, eyes watering, and gives me the most innocent look I’ve ever seen on a woman who abandoned innocence with extreme enthusiasm last night.
Rithy’s gaze moves between us. I need to get away from all of them.
Away from Natalia sitting in that dress designed specifically to finish me.
I head down the narrow hallway toward the rear, Ronan's already cleared the hall and fear starts to line my stomach.
I reach the sliding door to the back lounge and open it.
Ronan and Freja are already stretched across the entire sofa, as I suspected.
Freja is tucked against his side, shoes off, her feet in his lap.
Ronan has one arm around her and is holding a pastry over her mouth while she tries to bite it without using her hands.
They both look at me. Ronan lowers the pastry.
Freja smiles sweetly. “You can sit with us.” She gestures towards the six inches of available cushion.
“I’d rather be dragged behind the bus then have to witness this for the next four hours.”
“You don't know what you're missing!” Ronan barks with a laugh and Freja joins him.
I close the door and turn back toward the main cabin.
At the same moment, Natalia steps into the hallway.
One hand trails along the wall for balance as the bus picks up speed, the other already reaching for the restroom handle.
We both stop, awkwardly. The hallway is too narrow for this.
Her eyes move over me slowly. My pulse kicks hard enough to make me lightheaded.
I flatten myself against one wall to let her pass.
She turns sideways, and her chest brushes mine.
A warm, soft press through two layers of fabric that shouldn’t mean anything.
I watch her breath catch, so does mine. She tries to step past, but the bus jerks beneath us and her hand lands against my stomach to steady herself. Every muscle under her palm locks.
Her eyes lift to mine and the hallway vanishes.
There's only her hand on me. Her body close enough that her perfume reaches me beneath the coffee and citrus cleaner the tour bus is doused in.
That peach and vanilla combined with her heated skin.
The scent trapped in my shirt last night.
The one I tried to burn out of my head under water hot enough to bake me.
Her lips part and my gaze drops. My body reacts brutally, straining against my jeans.
It's been waiting for permission from the minute I saw her on that sofa.
The memory of her moving against my hand crashes through me.
The noises, the drag of her nails, the sting of her teeth.
The way she looked hurt when she thought I might leave right after.
“Morning,” she whispers.
Her voice is rough enough to suggest she remembers everything too. I swallow.
“Morning.”
We don't move. We're breathing too hard for two people doing absolutely nothing. Her palm stays on my stomach. My hand is braced against the wall beside her hip to keep me steady. The bus takes a turn and she sways into me. This time there’s no mistaking the contact when her hips meet mine.
Heat shoots through my body and I can't stop the muted groan she must hear.
Her eyes widen. She didn't just hear it, she feels it.
There's no hiding anything in this hallway, not with her pressed against me and my body determined to make how much I want her a public declaration.
A flush climbs her throat and our breathing turns shallow.
This is catastrophic. All we're doing is standing here, passing each other on a tour bus. Fully clothed, but I’m already seconds from dragging her into the restroom and destroying every responsible decision I made last night. I step back so quickly my shoulder hits the opposite wall.
“Sorry.”
Her brows pull together.
“For what?”
Everything? The fact that I can still feel her around my fingers, that I had to leave, that I want to put her against another wall and ask whether she still thinks I’m such a good friend.
“Need to get by. I need more sleep,” I mutter.
She glances toward the bunks, then back at me. A knowing light flickers through her eyes.
“Bad night?”
The corner of her mouth lifts. She's evil.
Genuinely, thoroughly, evil. I move around her before I embarrass myself in a way no amount of expensive therapy could repair.
Her shoulder drags along my chest as we pass.
I keep going, I tell myself not to look back.
I reach the bunks and yank open the curtain of mine.
It's third down on the left, lower bunk. Same one I always claim no matter what bus we’re on.
I climb inside and drag the curtain shut so hard the rings rattle.
From the main cabin, Rithy calls, “Already taking a nap?”
“Something like that,” I shout back. “Wake me up in Nagoya.”
I turn onto my side and curl inward, knees bent as much as the narrow bunk allows.
I can still feel her hand on my stomach, see the surprise in her eyes when she realized what standing that close did to me.
I'm trying to control it but my body isn't listening.
My heart won't steady. I breathe out slowly through clenched teeth.
Stop, I think to myself, willing my body into submission.
God damn it. Just stop.
Natalia
The bus sighs to a stop outside the hotel, air brakes releasing with a long mechanical exhale.
Everyone starts moving at once. Curtains snap open, phones disappear into pockets while bags appear from places I didn’t know bags could fit.
Ronan wanders down the aisle asking if anyone's seen his left shoe, which raises several questions no one seems interested in answering.
I'm starting to realize tour life is ninety percent waiting followed by ten percent absolute panic.
I gather my purse, charger and the jacket I shoved beneath the seat sometime outside Tokyo.
By the time I make it down the steps, the luggage bays are already open and half the road crew is moving around beneath them, hauling suitcases onto the pavement and sorting everything into increasingly unstable groups.
Another coach idles behind us, carrying more of the crew, while one of the production trucks has already disappeared toward the venue with everything expensive enough to require insurance.
Rafe has one hand at Kasia’s back as they head toward the glass doors. Ronan and Freja disappear after them, talking about how his shoe managed to migrate. Rithy pauses long enough to pat his brother on the back before heading to the hotel.
Kiri stays, he’s standing beside the open luggage compartment with his sleeves pushed up and his hair falling into his eyes, reaching into the dark storage space while one of the crew calls out names.
He drags out two suitcases at once, one in each hand, like that's totally normal. My body responds before my brain can tell it to behave.
Really? We’re doing this again?
It seems watching him carry luggage is enough to undo me now. Great. Fucking perfect.
He passes the bags to a hotel porter, then reaches back inside for another.
Zero impatience, or expectation that somebody else should handle it because he'll spend tomorrow night onstage in front of thousands of people.
He just lifts, carries, sorts. Checks the tag before handing each piece over.
I watch the whole scene happening in front of me, crew members moving around one another, luggage wheels rattling against the pavement, buses humming along the curb.
Everyone caught in their own little system.
That’s what touring feels like, I think.
A collection of tiny lives moving beside each other.
Planets with their own gravity, briefly sharing an orbit before the route pulls everyone apart again.
You eat together, travel together, sleep in rooms separated by a few walls.
Then soundcheck starts, interviews happen, crew vanishes into venues, and suddenly everyone belongs to a different piece of the machinery.
You circle each other without always connecting.
I don’t want to be pulled out of Kiri’s gravity.
The thought arrives so quickly that I stop breathing.
Kiri reaches into the luggage bay again, his shirt pulling tight across his back.
The muscles along his arms shift as he braces one hand against the frame and drags out a larger case.
One of the younger crew members moves to take it from him, but Kiri shakes his head and carries it to the growing pile himself.